Brain Power > Public Domain Download

Cash Transfer as a Form of Social Safety Net

(1/1)

MikeLigalig.com:

The 1.5 billion people question: food, vouchers, or cash transfers? (English)
ABSTRACT
With 1.5 billion people covered globally, food and voucher programs provide an important lifeline for the poor and vulnerable. The study is the 1.5 Billion People Question: Food, Vouchers or Cash Transfers? reveals that while countries increasingly support people with cash as a form of safety net, food-based programs are still important interventions in some contexts. The analysis highlights how food and voucher programs remain relevant, and in most circumstances, have improved over time.It is against such a backdrop that this book explores how to genuinely integrate the agendas of social protection and food assistance. To be clear: over the past decades, efforts to introduce, expand, and upgrade social protection systems in low- and middle-income countries primarily revolved around cash transfers—and for good reasons. At the same time, about 1.5 billion people worldwide have been covered by in-kind food programs, 1 billion of whom live in countries examined in this volume. In-kind transfers have been a key vehicle to provide income support to poor consumers; but, on average, they have often done so at high cost and as part of broader agricultural support and food price risk management efforts. In other words,in-kind programs can generate technical and political economy quandaries that go well beyond income support to poor consumers.The book provides a long-awaited and very much-needed analysis on such a shift: when viewed through the lenses of history, countries are increasingly moving from in-kind provisions to cash-based transfers, often with vouchers as an intermediate step. Yet this process is far from straightforward, and it is checkered by the bumpy and erratic pathways of evolution. In particular, the book argues that many of the precursors of current cash transfer programs were in-kind measures and that such measures are still relevant in certain circumstances. The volume’s analysis—one at the intersection of economics, political economy, politics, sociology, and history—would help debunk some long-standing myths about food assistance, highlight the complex and inter- twined objectives pursued by well-intentioned food programs, and identify insightful lessons from reform processes that are, regrettably, seldom available internationally.

Linkback: https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=87800.0

MikeLigalig.com:
Citation: Alderman, Harold H.; Gentilini, Ugo; Yemtsov, Ruslan G.. 2017. The 1.5 billion people question : food, vouchers, or cash transfers?. Washington, D.C. : World Bank Group. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/398281507803030509/The-1-5-billion-people-question-food-vouchers-or-cash-transfers

Linkback: https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=87800.0

Navigation

[0] Message Index